No cafe today, a nice healthy breakfast at home, before a steady drive to the venue, disappointing to see the rain clouds putting in a Sunday appearance again, some consistent weather would be nice. With two seconds in section so far in this four round series, I really needed to pull a decent peg and get a section win, one of the corners would be favourite, or a peg with some space, so when 27 revealed itself, I can't say I was over the moon, as it was going to struggle to compete, having been the worst but one peg in the series so far. I was still in the knockout, Adrian Jefferies was my opponent for today and he drew 6, that should end my knockout..........
The lake looked a good colour, there were signs of fish moving and blowing, so I was confident that there would be a few caught, hopefully a bit of venue knowledge would pay off. I have found that by far the most consistent summer baits on this venue are pellet and paste, so that comprised my bait, apart from some dead maggots for the margin, which I knew would most likely be a waste of time, due to having pegs either side.
One line at the bottom of the shelf, which I could just reach with the allowed topkit +3 sections of pole, initial feed of a few 6mm pellets and a couple of expanders, which was my starting bait, as it usually catches both carp and skimmers here. I had a small carp on the expander but it was a long wait for a bite. As I had a little bit of fizzing, added some more pellet and dropped over it with paste. A skimmer and another carp were netted, before a long wait for a couple more on paste.
I had set up a shallow rig and had a while slapping and lifting and dropping that, to no avail, what was surprising, given the fizzing was the lack of liners and foul hookers, so what was causing the fizz I'm not sure, certainly not lots of carp. By 3pm I had a skimmer, the 4 carp and a headache, a walk to the van to get some pills relieved the boredom and gave me fresh impetus to push on and get a decent finish to the match as it was fairly obvious that the whole lake was fishing hard, only those with some space were catching.
The margins had looked devoid of fish, but big carp can be deceptively stealthy, I had been feeding 8mm pellets and dropped in with a 8mm expander on the hook, only for it to get ragged off by shit fish. I now cupped some maggots in, one to keep the shit fish occupied and two, to hopefully attract a carp or two. Back on the paste and I managed one more carp, before having another look down the edge with a hard 8mm banded straight on the hook. it buried and the biggest fish of the day, about 9lb, put up a decent tussle before being gratefully netted.
A hard day, my 'reward' was another second in section with 34.06, a lack of skimmers or another decent carp costing me the section win. Surprisingly Adrian struggled on peg 6, managing less than half my weight, so a pleasant surprise to get through the knockout. For the last match in the series, I need a bloody good draw and to have the other framing contenders in my section, with my 'luck', I can't see that happening, but who knows.......
As regards luck, Tom Mangnall won my section and was second in the silvers, but due to the way the money was calculated, I even lost out on the section default, I did suggest to Tony last year that paying silvers wasn't a good idea, as it can affect the league, with anglers fishing for silvers instead of section money.
1st 110- 2 - Mike Nicholls - p31
2nd 59- 8 - Craig Edmunds - p22
3rd 52-15 - Glenn Bailey - p4
4th 52-12 - Paul Elmes - p3
5th 52- 4 - Gordon Cannings - p7
6th 46-10 - Rod Wootten - p2
Silvers
1st 23- 9 - Vic Bush - p30
2nd 9- 1 - Dave Evans - p13
2nd 9- 1 - Tom Mangnall - p25
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